Red Cross VADs were usually gently-reared, upper-class girls who volunteered to help trained nursing “sisters”. Famous VADs included Agatha Christie, whose work at a dispensary gave her insight into poisons, which she used in her novels; Vera Brittain, who wrote a classic memoir about her experiences as a VAD; and Lady Diana Manners, the most beautiful debutante in England, whose aristocratic parents expected her to marry the Prince of Wales.